


kids are still depressed when you dress them up

by cyanica



Series: could roses bloom [trans anakin verse] [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Image, Coming Out, Dysphoria, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Hiding Medical Issues, Hurt Anakin Skywalker, Hurt/Comfort, LGBTQ Themes, Outing, Protective Ahsoka Tano, Self-Esteem Issues, Trans Anakin Skywalker, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:08:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25506451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: Ahsoka felt claustrophobic, wrong inside her own skin like something had always been amiss; she realized in melancholic waves that the feelings were entirely Anakin's, as if he'd been standing in the mirror for hours, condemning the parts of himself that were wrong, and letting them fester within his soul until he found something new to hate, until he broke himself apart. The ashes of who he was became were lost upon the floor. But Ahsoka was good at mending the pieces, connecting the fragments together the way they should have been, and building them better. Anakin is getting better at letting her.Or trans Anakin is stupid and reckless for much more arcane reasons, deadnaming + dysphoria + outing happens, and Ahsoka makes an effort to pick up the pieces and rebuilds because she's just trying to help.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, CT-6116 | Kix & Anakin Skywalker, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker
Series: could roses bloom [trans anakin verse] [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795435
Comments: 6
Kudos: 116





	kids are still depressed when you dress them up

**Author's Note:**

> [originally posted 26-06-20]
> 
> [original notes] a sequel to 'you're ripped at every edge but you're a masterpiece'. can be read without, but i think it'd make more sense reading that one first just to give context about anakin&ahsoka's relationship.
> 
> in reality, i think the sw universe would be pretty accepting of lgbt+ folk, just 'cause stuff like that would be 'normal' (despite the underrepresentation ://) with so many individuals and cultures. however, for the sake of this fic/verse, the way the galaxy reacts to it would be similar (or a mixture) to that of our own: normalised for the most part, but there are still a few dickheads. dogma, in this case, is that dickhead - not because i think he'd be unaccepting, but (at first) he struck me as very clinical and traditional, so soz dogma, but it had to be someone. this fic is set earlier in tcw so, it's before the umbara arc where dogma redeems himself.
> 
> title from 'sippy cup' - melanie martinez. in this fic i refer to the metaphor of 'masks' a lot, so in my mind that was synonymous for 'dressing up', while the 'depression' references the idea that despite dressing up (wearing a facade), it does not make you any happier to do so. 
> 
> [added notes] i didn't realise how this fic could be interpreted (along with how some of it was originally worded) - like ahsoka, a cis person, having the 'save' anakin, a trans person, connotating the message that transgender people are people who need to be rescued and are defenceless. that's not what i am implying whatsoever, and i am so sorry it comes across that way. the reason why it's like that is because i love hurt!anakin and protective!ahsoka both physically and emotionally. i think it's an interesting dynamic where anakin can be vulnerable in front of someone he trusts like an equal, like the way he possibly couldn't in front of obi-wan. anyway, the reason why anakin doesn't 'stand up' for himself is due to reasons that weren't properly addressed in this fic like past struggles/discrimination, the typical 'im fine' bs, and desensitization towards the discrimination. yes, it may make him look 'weak', but i am in no way saying that trans people are weak, vulnerable and need rescuers at all. ahsoka, on the other hand, is the 'protective one' because a) i like that kind of relationship between them and b) she doesn't have the desensitization towards discrimination the way anakin does, and therefore is shocked and outraged. the fact that ahsoka is the 'protecter' in this story, is because of the relationship they have, and not because of their genders/identities. anakin is still a badass motherfucker despite being vulnerable once in a while, and so are trans folk and queer peeps in general.
> 
> p.s because i didn't think i would be uploading this again, i used some of the writing in a different work that's also posted on my account. so yeah, plagiarised of myseof lmao. technically this one came first, so that story plagiarises of this one but whatever - it's all my writing!

She could feel it before it happened. The almost inaudible snapping of fragmented bone, the explosion of watercolour bruises that erupted in rainbow hues of sickly yellow, azure and lilacs across pale flesh, and that unnerved, pained grunt sound unable to be repressed left his lips in a much-too familiar way as her master collapsed to his knees, gasping like the oxygen in the atmosphere had dissipated.

Ahsoka watched Dogma, the sole cause of said familiar chaos, as he stood dumbfounded, awkwardly gapping and uncertain as to why the general had all but been bested by some simple kick to the chest, and not really sure what to make of it. Sure, Anakin and the boys had been sparring for a few hours, but not to the point of exhaustion, neither did Dogma really believe he had the power to bring down a Jedi.

"Get Kix, now!" She ordered towards the rest of the group who stood by just as speechless, jolting them out of their perplexia. It was truly alarming how many times she'd said those very words throughout the course of her apprenticeship, especially since she'd only been one for no longer than six months. At first, she'd assumed it was the price of the war, and that price would always have to be paid for with the blood of those who fought against it, but now it was different. Anakin Skywalker was different. He was reckless and insane and stubborn, and somehow hiding the things that ailed him was ingrained into his being the way religion was. She understood _why_ – how could she not after what had happened a few weeks ago when he shared his most undeniable secret with her – but then again, she didn't _understand_.

She wasn't sure who she barked the order to, but Fives responded with a, "yes, sir!" and suddenly he was running out of the training room to the medical bay.

She turned back to Anakin who had shuffled into a sitting position with his face twisted into that infamous scowl of his, and already trying to stand up from the ground. Ahsoka gave him credit for the attempt, but the effort was futile. It was like he didn't possess the energy, or the pain was constantly stopping him from doing so. If that wasn't already making her insides drown with anxiety, his shallow, hot breaths that came in and out of his mouth in infrequent waves, did. It was as if he had the inability to inhale a sufficient amount of oxygen from lungs that made a slight sickening whistling noise each time he exhaled. His hand clutched to the fabric around his heart, trying to gulp more desperate breaths, but the oxygen was unattainable.

Ahsoka knelt down next to him, placing a delicate hand across his shoulder and the other along his chest, their hands meeting. She felt around the whirlpool of distress and pain in the Force from both their wavelengths, and tried to get an understanding of how bad the damage was to Anakin's lungs or whatever it was. However, she was no healer and instead of embracing that serene, calm atmosphere Jedi were supposed to attain, all Ahsoka felt was the uprising of a storm.

Rex, perhaps seeing the frustrated hurt on Ahsoka's face when her attempts to assess and heal Anakin went nowhere, dropped to his knees alongside them.

"I don't need –... It's fi–" Anakin choked out in laboured, uncontrolled breaths that seemed to amplify against the walls of the Resolute's training room as if to juxtapose just how idiotic that statement proved to be. Despite him shielding himself off from her, Ahsoka caught the whispers of her master throughout the supernatural, metaphysical essence of their connective Force-bond and the absence of oxygen filling her lungs made her head dizzy. The world swam violently in front of her through a beautifully nauseating concoction of oxygen asphyxiation. Desperately, she reached out for Rex who grounded her to reality like a lifeline, an anchor, keeping her from getting lost and drowned in Anakin's storm.

"Respectfully, sir, I'd believe that if you could breathe." Rex said, and Ahsoka was grateful that he was here so she wouldn't have to be the only one to yell at Anakin about this later for how suicidally stubborn he was when it came to his own health.

"I _can..._ brea–..."

"What's happened?" Kix rushed in, shadowed by Fives. The medic didn't look nearly as surprised to be summoned, nor witness his general in the state he was in.

"He can't breath."

Kix came up to the trio scattered about on the ground. Anakin, unable to sit up by himself, leaned onto Ahsoka like a rag doll in a way that made her heart ache. She bit down on her lip and did the ' _Jedi-thing'_ of repressing her worry, her anxiety, the fear that something may be seriously wrong, and kept her gaze towards the clone medic's eyes. He didn't appear afraid, and perhaps it was his own facade that was an illusion of the truth or concealed it behind years of desensitization to war traumas, but Ahsoka found comfort in it – or at least she tried to without the phantom, intertwined pain in her chest threatening to asphyxiate her.

"Only you, General Skywalker, could injure yourself on a day when there is no battle." Kix huffed lightheartedly, knelt with them and started to unpack the medkit by their feet. He motioned for Rex and Ahsoka to move slightly as he started examining Anakin. Unsurprisingly, Anakin dodged the med droid's scan and went to fend it off with his mechno like it was the most despised thing in the universe.

"We were just sparring, sir." Dogma piped in sounding actually guilty and Ahsoka almost felt bad for the clone. Whatever _this_ was was mostly definitely not of Dogma's doing, but he didn't know.

Anakin rolled his eyes, deciding he was over with all their annoying _'pestering'_ , and tried to stand up. "It's... nothin' – _agh_!" Fortunately, Rex had been there to catch him when he inevitably collapsed back down again, giving Kix the opportunity to run the med droid. "Must you?" Anakin shot Kix a scowl with a terrifying stare that would have had others quivering. Kix, Ahsoka assumed, must have been used to it after a lifetime's worth of tending the wounds, battle scars and other mishaps of Anakin Skywalker.

"As your medical profession currently assessing whatever it is that you've done to your lungs, I must." Kix replied simply.

Actually looking a little less pale in the face, Anakin decided he was already feeling better and shuffled away from Ahsoka's presence. "I got winded from Domga's one hell of a push kick. That's all." Anakin dismissed, waving a hand non-committedly as if collapsing from being unable to breathe was the most ordinary and normal thing. He was still leaning against the wall, and she would have admired him for the ability to hide his very obvious medical issues so effortlessly if she was anything but _sane,_ unlike her master.

"I'll be the judge, sir." Kix told him, and Anakin pouted like the youngling he was. Ahsoka rolled her eyes, though a smiler tugged on her lips as some of the tension faded away and the storm receded back within the depths of Anakin Skywalker's being like it was waiting for another day to wreak havoc. It shouldn't have made her feel any safer, but somehow it did. Somehow her life had reached a point in which living within the calm before the storm was her twisted concept of peace; but that was certainly something to unpack and deal with another day.

The med droid beeped to alert everyone that it had finished the scan. "Patient diagnosis: mild chest trauma, costochondritis." It said in a heavily vocalized, monotone tone. She wasn't sure what ' _costochondritis'_ meant, but Kix furrowed his brow, and Ahsoka's heart stammered in her chest. "Cause: chronic, untreated chest trauma. Damage to thoracic vertebrae, sternum, rib cage: negative. Recommend course of treatment: nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory medication."

"Untreated?" Rex echoed, head snapping towards Anakin in a shocked, confused way. Anakin hid his suddenly darkened expression to the ground, refusing to say anything, as if all his fragile secrets would fall apart at the seams, and it took Ahsoka a few seconds to understand, to remember _why_ – why something that way would go _untreated_ –

_Ahsoka carefully peeled back the warm, bloodied layer of his undershirt, exposing a collection of battle scars littered across his skin like night sky constellations, a makeshift binder made from medical tape and bandages, and molten purplish-blue watercolour bruises across his scarlet flesh that seemed to paint the canvas of Anakin Skywalker together. Each fragmented piece – the constellated scars, both old and new; the smaller, once-disguised frame unburdened by many tunic layers; the binder that concealed the shape of his breasts – all fit together to make up who he was –_

"Medical scan complete. Patient, human female, analyzed."

_Oh gods, no._

The Force broke the tidal wave, like some explosion of undignified, unrelentingly exposure had all but consumed it. Layers of shame, of humiliation and the aftertaste of repressed memories that sparked abominable unacceptance suffocated the air as if she was drowning in the waves, unable to escape the cascade of heavy emotions Anakin generated. He had eyes like black holes.

"Um, what?" Fives stammered, looking between the med droid, Anakin and Kix like he'd just heard the droid announce that his general had a second head. "Did it just –"

Tup scoffed and laughed lightheartedly, unable to read the shadowy tension within the atmosphere, and the absolute dread on Ahsoka's face because she could just _feel_ the whirlwind of emotions and memories from Anakin assault her mind as if they were bullets and she was caught in their crossfire. "Kix, you're med droid must have a loose wire or somethin', if it thinks the general is a girl."

Kix inspected the droid who hovered innocently amongst the chaos it had caused, unapologetic for the secret it had just repressed to the surface and let said secret spread like wildfire throughout the 501st. "It was working fine before." He muttered, almost to himself.

Dogma, speaking up with newfound confidence after he had seemed so awkward and cautious before, said rather accusatorily, "the thing's malfunctioning. Its analysis is impossible." The tension was seeping off him in waves and ricocheting back into Anakin like some sort of sick role reversal.

Neither clone seemed to notice how the general had become deadly silent in the wake of their arguing. He was too silent, too undenying of the information for it to be anything other than true, and the clones suddenly realized that.

"General?" Rex whispered softly, trying to avert the invasive, curious, judging eyes of the others from Anakin, but the damage had been done. They wouldn't feel it the way she could, but it was as if the atmosphere had become electric. Sparks flew between the wavelengths of her synapses and burst as they collided with the broken glass of Anakin's shattered facade. The threatening, uncontrollable invisible force whispered around miscellaneous objects, readying to imploding them until they collapsed in on themselves. Fiery scarlet glow, burned from the intangible, unseen chaos of Anakin's electrical storm and became alight, metaphorical fire licking at the edges of the room, threatening to devour the illusion of the masquerade that Anakin still clutched onto. Abstract energy flooded the oxygen in an inescapable way, filling the room with what Anakin Skywalker experienced deep inside his lungs both presently and distantly, physically and mentally, until they all became what he was.

 _Afraid_.

"Get out." Anakin whispered, but it sounded like a hurricane. His voice seemed to shatter against the glass of the room, leave cracks scaling up the expanse of the walls, and crush objects until they imploded. It wasn't enough. Anakin's power only stayed a constant threatening vice foreshadowing the wreckage he was capable of, but it _would_ be.

"But –"

Ahsoka, feeling Anakin's brilliant concoction of anger, hurt and scrutiny seep into her bones like bone marrow, felt a flame grow within her like magma. "You heard Master Skywalker, boys; that's an order!" She shouldn't have been so harsh, and she knew she wasn't truly angry with them in comparison to how she felt with herself. Anakin had been out of breath, favoring a hand to his side all morning and probably had been wearing the damn poor excuse for a binder for too goddamn long, so why hadn't she noticed?! _Stupid, stupid, dammit –_

There was a chorus of, "sir, yes, sir!"s. Fives, Dogma, Tup and even Rex reluctantly but obediently left the room at the request, and she was disappointed that a breath of relief hadn't washed over the shared bond like she wished it would've.

Anakin sighed, but it did nothing to relive the storm. In fact, her master seemed to let it fester, grow beyond the surface and consume everything in its wake as if _this_ had been the only way he'd learned how. It was symbolic of fighting fire with fire, she mused, and wondered how well that tactic usually worked out for him.

Anakin slumped his head against the wall and looked up towards the ceiling where he watched abstract constellations swirl beyond his eyes, ones that Ahsoka couldn't bear witness to, like she wasn't privy, wasn't worthy.

"Well, shit." He said, and Kix took the moment of distraction to pressed an anti-inflammatory pain relief hypo into his neck. Anakin let him.

"As your medic, I should know these things," Kix noted yet not unkindly or even chastisively as she'd heard him speak about such things in the past, like when her master had been walking around with a broken ankle for a day, or left a fever go unattended to that had reached beyond what was considered even remotely mild.

Kix didn't need to see the bandages compressing dangerously against Anakin's breasts, nor witness the many bruises that had broken across flesh as a result. He pieced everything together through the little of what Anakin was revealing to him, while the rest he somehow catalyzed on his own, months of serving as the 501st's medic and its somewhat of a rarity for a general sufficing him enough that he was able to fill in the gaps where Anakin was silent. "How long have you been binding like this?"

Anakin shrugged, looking purposely away from either of them. "I don't know. Since always?" His voice betrayed the familiar uncaring, nonchalant tone that he used to masquerade a much more unforgiving fear. He didn't seem as if he couldn't meet any of their eyes, and though it was only just Kix and herself with him, Ahsoka could feel the sense of the universe weigh down around her master, engulf him from all sides until it crushed him, and the secrets he carried bled from his body like a scarlet waterfall of uncontrollable life force.

Kix, sensing the shift in the air grow even more closed-off, claustrophobic, scrutinized, went back to the med droid in a clinical, detached manner that didn't seem quite right in Ahsoka's mind. "The compression of the bandages has caused inflammation around the cartilage that connects the ribs to the sternum. It's not permanent and very treatable–"

"Great, so we're done here–" Anakin went to stand up, yet Kix's hand held him down.

" _But_ I can't allow you to keep chest binding in this manner, sir."

Anakin met the medics' eyes, cold and frosted over in warning, in a threat. " _'Can't allow'_?" He echoed, voice low and lifeless in a way that made Ahsoka feel afraid. She was able to pick up feelings, memories from her bond with her master and they shadowed with the same tornado of hurt, scrutiny, shame, but it was impossible to fit the pieces together in a way that made sense, concealing the whole picture. She didn't think it would be very difficult to uncover the true mosaic of Anakin Skywalker's past with his emotions this uncontrolled, the memories were too strong, but she wouldn't dare go beyond what she wasn't privy to, what hadn't already been exposed.

Kix saw the warning for what it was, but duty overcame want and the clone medic persisted. "Today it was only cartridge inflammation, but it could have been a broken rib, a collapsed lung, pulmonary laceration, acute vascular injury–"

"And I'll handle that, if it ever happens, which it _won't_."

"Not to mention what could have happened if I were to give you an incorrect dosage of something under the presumption that you were physically male–"

"I _am_ male." The words rolled off his tongue and melted within the now burning, acidic electricity in the stormy atmosphere, and though he'd said the words no louder than the shadow of a whisper, Ahsoka could feel the syllables amplify against the walls of her skull and leave terrors echoing across the room. That burning, blazing star in the back of her mind radiated with pure, addictive truth as if nothing in the universe could deny such a small but significant soliloquy. Those words were not even truly for them, Ahsoka realized with bleary eyes and an aching chest that was of entirely her own pain.

Kix froze, moved back and said hesitantly, "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean – I meant no disrespect, but this is serious."

"This is stupid. I'm not talking about this anymore." Anakin pulled himself from the wall, swaying only slightly thanks to the numbing, suppressive hypo and sheer willpower that came with the medically avoidant complex of Anakin Skywalker as soon as he was out of the immediate danger of dropping dead from where he stood.

Yet Ahsoka could see beyond what he was desperate to hide and didn't fail to notice how his lungs were struggling to inhale oxygen, or that underneath his tunic and damaging bandages lay an array of humanly colourful broken, bruised flesh, or that the throbbing, white-hot pain was continuing to assault the edges of his rib cage like little nebulae clusters of pure electric lightning.

"Master, you can't possibly–" Ahsoka tried to say, tried to shout the words amongst the phantom shared pain erupting for her own chest, since the two – still very much connected, intertwined – were only ever so good at shutting each other out.

"Look, this doesn't concern any of you! I said I'm handling it!"

"Sir, I understand –"

"But you don't! You have no idea!" Anakin snapped, his voice cutting through the atmosphere like some sort of twisted dagger that had the power to render anyone else frozen as if the seeping coldness of his frostbitten exterior would paralyze them. Ahsoka knew, just as Kix did, what Anakin's facade looked like, what it felt like, watched as the afraid, battle-scarred boy become a shadow of who he was in favour of becoming an apathetic, cold, masqueraded shell that hid stars in the way darkness did.

He suddenly suppressed in on himself, looking smaller and younger than he should have. The ephemeral words that echoed within the room died against the walls, and yet they didn't cease to exist within their minds and instead brewed like some clarify substance that resigned inside their beings.

Is that what Anakin's truth was?

"Are we done here?" Anakin added more quietly, yet the storm was anything but. The words weren't really a question, and they knew that but –

"I still need to assess if there's exterior damage to your rib cage. I'll need to perform a physical, and you'll need to remove the bandages–"

"Yeah, not gonna happen, Kix."

"General, when it comes to medical decisions–"

Anakin scoffed. "You outrank me, I know. But you need my consent for that, and I told you my answer!"

"Master, we're just trying to help you." Ahsoka breathed, tiredly but not unkindly – perhaps with an edge that stung with helplessness – they were getting _nowhere_. Her ribs hurt as his did, and she felt like a child amongst the adults talking about things that they believed were beyond her. And yet, she was more prescriptive than they knew, and was less innocent than the child facade she wore.

"I've dealt with this shit for as long as I've known there was a difference between 'man' and 'woman', since slavers used the term 'girl-child: not of breeding age' as an insult because they _knew_ , and since the first time I saw my own reflection in the mirror and barely recognized who I saw staring back!" Anakin was like a supernova exploding upon the galaxy in brilliant, unconditional waves throughout the small space of their training room, like some kind of unstoppable force finally being released from its shackles. Half entrapped in more than one sort of prison, but borderline free nonetheless. It was the type of explosion that made one addicted to fire, a line in which Anakin danced across so frequently, and it threatened to consume him in fiery, intoxicating ways if he were to lose himself within it, if he wasn't as careful.

" _This_ ,” He grabbed a fistful of the frayed bandages unravelling from their place, “is how I am able to look at my body and truly _see_ myself. It's like finally fixing the thing that had always been broken throughout my whole life, and I am _not_ going to give that up."

 _But you aren't broken_ , Ahsoka thought as Anakin pushed her further from the familiar, comforting light and consequently left them both alone and drenched within an isolating darkness that they were never meant to fight against like this – detached, forsaken by one's own making because a connection mattered not who broke it, only simply that both receiving ends had lost unification.

Anakin tore himself from the room, the storm followed, and Ahsoka did too, because of course she did. She picked up the pieces.

* * *

The electrical whirlwind transfused with ocean and sand like an armageddon of stormy natural disasters, as Anakin paced around the different corridors to his quarters, with Ahsoka behind him like a lost child, desperate to undo the chaos and make it all okay again.

He stopped dead at the familiar tone from around the corner, and Ahsoka had no choice but to bear witness as the betrayal stung like a dagger throughout the collective bond shared between them, dividing Anakin and herself further and further away from each other like they were lost from one another in the depths of the tornado, one that was no longer a creation of Anakin's own design, but instead one that he had simply gotten used to over the years, and it had transformed from alien to a part of who he was.

"He lied to us." The voice dripped venom like it poisoned the air with wayward bigotry. She was almost afraid to look at Anakin's face from where he had come to a halt beside her, but when she did finally see him, his face was devoid. That, somehow, was more terrifying.

"This has nothing to do with us, Dogma!" Fives scoffed. "You're making this all about yourself."

"All I'm saying is that it's not–" Dogma tried again, angry in a way that he had no right to be. Ahsoka's fists were clenched in her sides. She could feel herself becoming the storm, and regretted how easily it was to lose herself within it. The edge Anakin danced between so familiarly was insights, the edge between sanity and emotion, the desire to protect family. Perhaps she danced, too, and they'd fall in the type of way that one couldn't come back from.

"I swear to all the gods and deities of the universe," Rex was saying, seething. "If you say 'not natural' as if you _aren't_ a genetically modified soldier right down to the DNA, in an _army_ of clones that all share the same genetic code as you, then you might just as well be the biggest hypocrite in the history of the galaxy!"

"I didn't ask to be this way!" Dogma defended, and from the clatter of flesh against armour – the commotion of angry, startled voices that erupted in a juxtaposing way between brothers – someone had been shoved and pushed into the duresteel corridor wall.

"And you think General Skywalker did?" Rex's tone was of something Ahsoka hadn't heard beyond the battlefield. A warning, a threat. A promise to protect a comrade, a friend. What Rex and Anakin had, she assumed, went beyond just the plain, loyal mutual respect ingrained into every clone's programming to mindlessly follow the orders of their general; instead they shared trust, and Ahsoka hadn't realized how different the two concepts were until recently.

"Why else would someone–"

"Do _what_?" Fives pressed.

"Pretend to be something they are not!'

"The general doesn't owe you anything, Dogma!" Tup added.

"I'm supposed to trust him with my life!"

She felt Rex tense, the suddenly go cold and freezing with chilling frostbite. "And what the hell –" Rex drawled, voice low and seething like something twisted and sick had corrupted and invaded his veins, " – suddenly stops you from upholding that trust? The general is the same guy you knew yesterday, the same guy you knew when you were assigned to the 501st, and the same guy that has and _will continue_ to save our asses the moment the Sepies decide to wreak havoc down on us all!"

"But that's just it! He isn't and never had been a _'guy'_ –" Dogma spat, stressing the word like exposing the lie for what it was. He was so close to Rex's face that their breaths were exchanged between them, they could feel each other's fury as if it ran like blood through their veins, and Ahsoka had the awful, undignified single thought that she _wanted_ Dogma to throw the catalytic punch, just so Rex and the others could fight back – so Dogma could pay for his ignorance in pain that was but a _glimpse_ of what Anakin dealt with all throughout his life.

But she was better, she had to be. The Jedi values, as much as Anakin disagreed with them, had taught her compassion, knowledge in the face of ignorance – solving problems with peace, with clarity rather than violence and retaliation.

They had also taught her unemotionalism, the act of denying personal feelings and attachment for the sake of said clarity and problem solving –

– But where they taught her their truth, Anakin Skywalker had taught her his. He taught her the strengths of the Jedi and their values, their wayward disillusionment and their failures; and yet, more than that, he had taught her what was _beyond_. Compassion through attachment, trust through protection, family through love. The fate of the galaxy would always come second to the people Anakin Skywalker cared about, so he had taught her that family was sacred, to be defended, and in return, Ahsoka fell from grace in an entirely different way, yet fell all the same as he did before her: the clarity and serenity held by the Jedi bound together with the illuminating concepts of unconditional love and family Anakin had unintentionally ingrained into her with the same importance of blood, as life force, and she had _learned._ The equilibrium between the two teachings, the two dynamics, resided within her like a dyad, like a fulcrum, and she was no longer fueled by anger, but illuminated with a true conscience powered by the solar flare of her family's – her _brother's_ – need for protection.

"Enough!" Her mouth moved on its own accord, voice amplifying with sudden determination, yet with the absence of childish anger. It was the kind of power that someone as young as her shouldn't have the burden of possessing, making her sound older, wearier that she had the right to be at fourteen years of age.

She had stepped forward around the corner to meet the clones staring back at her with wide, shocked eyes as if they'd been caught conspiring. Rex, Tup and Fives had formed an almost circle around Dogma who stood out from the group like an outsider, completely exposed. His energy radiated one similar to that of a traitor, not against the cause or the Republic or his duty – no, nothing that dramatic – but emotionally, _personally._ If Ahsoka hadn't been immersed in the situation, she wouldn't have been able to tell the two apart, the hurt in her lungs, in her mind was the same.

"C-Commander..." Dogma sputtered, huge eyes meeting her own slitted, menacing ones. She could feel the air growing cold, embarrassed even.

"I'm glad you have your priorities straight, Dogma." She told him, voice calm and even like the older, wiser persona she was trying to evoke – a facade that made her look strong enough to be taken seriously, to be respected, instead of dismissed as the naive, brash youngling that people often mistook her for. She was fourteen, battling within a war with the adults and fighting things she didn't quite understand, but she'd become more perceptive than they realized, had grown up because she didn't have another choice not to. "I'm glad you realize the true, important battles worth fighting for, _and_ that those battles are of what's in your commanding officer's pants, _not_ the galactic civil war terrorizing billions."

Dogma looked as embarrassed as he did when he thought he'd seriously injured his general (an amazing contradiction, if Ahsoka thought so herself). She resisted the childish urge to roll her eyes; she was better than that – she _had_ to be. "I didn't mean–"

"No, we _know_ what you mean." Ahsoka cut in before he could finish – she wasn't interested in the rest, didn't want Anakin to hear any more than what he'd already listened to (today and all throughout the past). Dogma's words were the kind of sayings that infected; they were a pathogenic curse that bred lies and wayward oppression throughout the universe where injustice shouldn't exist, and Ahsoka wasn't going to let the carcinogenic disease spread any further throughout the galaxy. "You've made yourself perfectly clear, and I think your services to the Republic lie elsewhere than the 501st."

Alarm vaulted like electricity throughout the atmosphere. Not only Dogma, but the others, Rex, Fives and Tup all snapped their heads towards her in shock, surprise. She herself was surprised a little, too.

_Huh._

"Commander, you can't–"

"This galaxy has enough problems, and _you_ are making them where no issues lie. You're making the concept of someone's identity into something that is wrong, when in reality it's an expression of who they are, their true self representing their outward appearance and something that should be celebrated and _accepted as the norm_ if it weren't for people like you. I think you've demonstrated who is more human."

So maybe Ahsoka fell in the same way the Anakin did, jumped off the edge and chose family in the wake of sanity, of non-attachment, but perhaps it was destined that way. Falling to the other side was hauntingly beautiful in a sad sort of way to know that she was plummeting from grace the further she dove into her emotions, yet became freer with each moment closer towards the ground. It just so happened that 'love' was a falling action – a swan dive – and neither of them had the illusion of wings like they thought they did.

"You're dismissed." She said with a certain finality, with love for another.

But –

– When Ahsoka turned around, Anakin was gone.

* * *

It was night on the Resolute's time cycle when Ahsoka felt it best to rebuild, picking up the broken, fragmented pieces she found scattered throughout the floor – the universe – and built them better.

"Master?" She carefully peered her head through the unlocked door of Anakin's quarters. Anger and the painful dagger of hurt enveloped the air like an unsettled, quiet hurricane in the wake of a serene atmosphere. It wasn't always the best idea to talk to Anakin when he felt more storm, more awaiting avalanche, than human, but she'd observed, she'd learned and she knew how the chemical messages in Anakin's mind seemed to fire. He wasn't an explosion like the ones that detonated upon the battlefield and left men to bleed from crimson-stained abandoned limbs, and definitely not something that others would try to 'defuse'. He was a sandstorm that sometimes got caught up in his emotions like she did, and today had been the not-so-calm before it.

"I'm fine, Ahsoka." He was by the floor-length mirror, upper body unclothed, yet the bandages still constricted and wrapped around his breasts like the improvised binder was an extension of himself that he felt safer with, despite it killing him. Next to the small closet, lay his abandoned tunic, undershirt and armour pieces that were littered with white scuff marks like the constellated battle scars upon his skin.

"Sorry about before," she confessed, rather quietly, feeling incredibly small and young for such a bold display (no matter who necessarily it was). "But what he was saying – I couldn't just..."

He didn't turn to look at her. She felt as if she shouldn't be staring, that this was an intimate moment between Anakin and his thoughts and his body that she shouldn't be bearing witness to.

The intangible, but significantly consuming burden that lay across Anakin's shoulders had lifted in the past weeks since she found out, and together they possessed the weight. It was within the little things, reminding him to take off the binder after wearing it for much too long, or sneaking him pain medication on the first couple days of his cycle from her own stash. He used to feel serene in her presence, unafraid unlike the day when he'd been bleeding, more dead than alive, and terrified beyond rationality that Ahsoka would condemn the truth of Anakin Skywalker as something ungodly that went against the laws of the universe, and couldn't possibly be accepted as male, as human, as her brother; rather than being afraid of his own life, bleeding out from underneath him and staining the earth crimson in twisted arcane secrecy.

As if the universe was mocking her for all the progress they'd made, that sense of comfort had all but dissipated into smithereens. The expression on his face matched the unsteady, bound-to-erupt trepidation that drenched the air like smothering, bitter syrup. She felt claustrophobic, wrong inside her own skin like something had always been amiss, abominable, and she realised in melancholic waves that the feelings were entirely Anakin's, as if he'd been standing there for hours, picking off the parts of himself that were wrong, and letting them reside within him until he found something new to hate, until he broke himself apart. The ashes of who he was became were lost upon the floor. "You don't have to keep checking up on me."

"It's my job." She said simply, truthfully because at least one of them had to be. He didn't seem to be very interested in her at all, instead taking to unwind the edges of the bandages, only to wrap them tighter. His movements were clinical, dissociative like completing the most mundane task he'd done one thousand times before, as if he wasn't damaging himself the way his thoughts did, and it hurt her to bear witness.

Ahsoka wasn't sure what had changed, what had shifted inside her to feel this acidic, burning anger in the wake of suffocating hurt, but the tectonic plates inside her heart collided like shattering glass that erupted into volcanic flames, and she decided that the two emotions were intertwined like lover's fingers, woven together like the fabric of the universe. "Watching out for you is who I am, and I'm not gonna let some ignorant _sleemo_ stop that."

Anakin sighed tiredly, exhaustion coating his features in a way that suggested he was used to this inhuman unacceptance - _expected_ it, and gods did that make her eyes sting. He carefully inspected his scarred, calloused hands that had become blemished, bruised and bloodied over the course of the war like a reflection of his soul, and ran them over the bandages pressed flat against his chest. "I appreciate what you and the others did for me, but I've got it, okay? I can deal with this by myself. I always have." He looked lost, far away, and perhaps he wasn't even _all her_ e as she'd thought – certainly not in the same reality in which his physical existence lived within. His mind lay trapped in what she could sense was a distant, abstract past that left indentations upon his memories and the present like tangible scars upon his skin, a fault within his flesh that she'd only ever experienced from the second-hand cascading waves she had felt from his seastroms of a unifying Force-presence. "You shouldn't have to."

It didn't mean she understood, but it didn't mean that she did not. To Anakin and Ahsoka, it made sense and that's all it needed to be.

Ahsoka moved closer towards her master, closer towards the eye of the storm, closer onwards the sun. Hot, starry frequencies sparked through their connected skin as her flesh met Anakin's, and together they burned a familiar, vibrant ember of flame and light – a shadow of pure, addictive attachment and a firework display of love against a lightless, void-like star that was always so secretive, so forbidden, but now it rebelled and reigned high within the atmosphere tonight, and claimed the sky as its own. There, lying in the warmth of her hold of the Force, was Anakin's unburdened heart, who had all but consumed it with his inability to unlove, his flaws that weren't flaws at all, and his scars that made up the seams of his being like smithereens that had been broken fragments of his soul, only to be pieced together again. His presence in Ahsoka's mind lingered heat against the tips of her fingers, and the strength of their bond astonished her. It grew more powerful as the months passed by, but now it was undeniable. It was unfathomable to Ahsoka how this one person had fallen into place within her heart, as if he had always _meant_ to be there, against everything she'd come to know, ever been taught. Anakin burned, craved and demanded that connection like a blinding, radiant sun across the Force, and seeped fiery warmth throughout the air as if he were made of pure flame.

It was no surprise to either of them when Ahsoka breathed, "well, maybe I want to."

They were destined to be like this, she decided. The universe had condemned them family, bound together from their own fault lines and understanding of the other in rebellious, forbidden ways, and they couldn't deny it if they wanted to. They were tethered to each other in a string of red fate the Jedi had decided was a noose, and instead of cutting the rope dead, they tied each other further to it and themselves like a line of life.

And perhaps it was hypocritical, perhaps they were dancing around flames of magma when parading their bond of red ribbon around like a tethered lifeline, and perhaps they were destined to ruin each other with attachment the way the Jedi have always warned, but Ahsoka would fight for her master until the universe ceased to exist. If they fell, they fell together, and that was enough for her. "You scared me today. When you collapsed, I thought..."

Anakin hadn't moved. Haunted eyes bore down onto his form through the mirror's reflection and he refused to look at anything else, feeling not only the trepidation of a sandstorm on his tongue from his own doing, but one made of heat and stars and meteorites from Ahsoka who burned like a nebula of vortexes beside him, against him. When he shifted his eyes ever so slightly to look at hers, they were glassy and red around the edges.

Her own eyes stung with something that seared anger - protectiveness. She wouldn't cry - she refused to - but she wasn't going to sit back and watch as Anakin Skywalker fell dead underneath his own design because he was too afraid, too self-sacrificial, too recklessly stubborn for heartbreaking arcane reasons, even if he couldn't see it himself.

"You're hurting yourself." She said simply, sadly and perhaps even with the edge of anger that corresponded with the hurt like some intoxicating, addictive sorcery. "I'm okay with who you are, Skyguy. None of those things have mattered to me, and I've never seen you any different, but I am _not_ okay with letting you do this to yourself."

Maybe it had been easier when she thought her master didn't go to medical because of his own stupid bravado complex, or that he wouldn't let himself be assessed by Kix because he didn't want anyone to worry, -- and looking back, Ahsoka assumed that was part of it -- but now she knew the devastating reasons why he refused help, and though she understood why, this wasn't something she could turn the other cheek at.

"Ahsoka..." Anakin warned, and she heard the mental communication of his _isn't hurting, this is fixing_ run through their intangible, metaphysical bond like a waterfall of starry colours, but he caught himself from saying it aloud, as if unable to convince himself of the unsaid soliloquy.

"Does anyone know?" Ahsoka asked quietly, whispering everything she said with a breath of hot oxygen on the edge of her lips, as if words were too loud, too unfamiliar and ugly for a moment that was to be serene. They fooled themselves like that, she knew.

The attempt proved futile, as the sandstorm inside the atmosphere rose like undead winds, and the air was suddenly putrid with smothering bitterness.

" _Now_ they sure as hell do." Anakin spat, tone venomous and infecting the air like some sort of disease. The Force had become a whirlwind of emotions, memories and thoughts she'd never experienced, feelings that didn't belong to her. And although he was projecting, she felt she'd never be privy to his burdens, instead constantly being pushed away like the small, snippy youngling he often saw her as. The moment of comfort, of familiar intimacy had broken like a facade that one used to comfort themself in the wake of a krayt dragon, unable to deny it's all-consuming, damned existence like the stars that haunted them in the void-like, blackened sky.

"The Jedi?"

Anakin huffed out a bitter, cynical exhale, tearing his red-rimmed eyes from hers, the edges of them stringing, and the lump in his throat cutting of words that he wouldn't say. She could feel the anger -- the hurt -- through the unifying, connective Force-bound between them, and it burned like fire alight from memories of a past not long enough ago -- buried, repressed, but undead and slowly poisoning the already wartorn, explosion-ruptured, bleeding landscape what was Anakin Skywalker's mind.

"Master Obi-Wan?"

Her master fell back into that lost, unaware mindspace of the past where she couldn't find him. Perhaps he never left, and that is why all she felt from him were shadows. "'Course he knows." He told her, voice more mournful than bitter. "We never – we never really..." Anakin sighed, unable to find the words, and the whisper of an aching longing for something more than himself caught the edges of Ahsoka's mind like a repressed hurricane, threatening to break apart the one who tamed it – or at least the illusion of them. Anakin's glassy eyes wouldn't meet hers, maybe they couldn't.

Maybe this was all too much.

Maybe it was enough.

Anakin strode away from the mirror, and picked up the pieces of armor and clothing like trying to pick up the pieces of himself he left behind, as if it worked that way.

"You know what talking to him is like." He said simply, as if anything were ever that easy. As if anything was ever so black or white, omitting every shade and hue of grey in between that made up the array of illuminating monochrome truths.

Because, no –

She didn't. Not because Anakin was correct, but, in contrast, it was because he wasn't. Master Kenobi was a hero, one of the greatest generals of the Grand Army of the Republic, and the kind of flawless, perfect Jedi that younglings wrote essays on and a person that people admired beyond belief.

But Master Kenobi wore a facade, like many of them did, only his was not as faultless as the galaxy – as Anakin Skywalker – seemed to believe. Woven beyond the exterior of the carefully concealing fabricated mask lay fault lines, cracked and fragmented in the way that earthy ground became underneath the unrelenting cascade of explosions and firefight of war, only to reveal volcanic, acidic streams of sulfuric ash and magma rivers: the planet's unforgiven molten core. Yet Obi-Wan Kenobi's mask didn't break away to uncover fiery ravines and magma waterfalls, but instead the much more damning, more humanely essence of compassion and care for Anakin Skywalker that burned just as brilliantly – forbiddenly – in its place.

Anakin would never see it, perhaps a part of him refused to believe that something so good wasn't a lie, but Ahsoka did. Master Kenobi was many things – so was Master Skywalker – and yet the ability to become unattached, noncommitted, denounce the love they held for one another was not one of them, just as it wasn't for herself and Skyguy. It was like a forsaken, carcinogenic curse that had been passed down through the generations of master and apprentice: this disallowed, self-ruining attachment and inability to let go, had dominated them in every which way, although they were lying to themselves while pretending to be blind towards it.

"He doesn't understand."

"Maybe you are not letting anyone try." The words were said like a fact, not unkindly and not in anyway way dismissive, but rather something that solidified in the calming equilibrium of unsettled air like molten magma steams and lava waterfalls turned to obsidian stone, turned illusion to truth, and amongst the chaotic flow of clouding emotions, the ash settled. The sandstorm melted into the desert air like it had never existed, and the hurricane fell into nothingness. The emotions shared between the two of them were unleashed, but they were neither restrained nor smothering. They simply were, and that's all they needed to be.

Ahsoka could feel beyond the wake of the storm and see unifying, undeniable clarity.

Anakin shone his false colours of monochrome black and whites masqueraded over rainbow-hued, brilliant stars that burned like lava, and revealed the vibrant heartstrings of a crescent true conscience of a child-like boy needing to be accepted, needing to be loved, underneath the fiery molten river storms that shadowed ire. The false bravado had always been an illusion, an act, yet she never knew why until she didn't, and that's when Ahsoka remembered the reason for Anakin's mask wasn't just protection, but an effort to unburden the ones he loved, to save them from the truth that perhaps, he felt, was worse; the truth that would reveal the kinds of things one couldn't unsee, nor ever take back. Like tainted bloody hands staining flesh, like magma burns that would never heal.

Obi-Wan hid his own faulted imperfections and prism of forbidden emotions that he couldn't allow himself to possess under the many broken pieces of undone flawlessness. The fault lines were breaking apart at the seams that held the facade together, only to reveal repressed, but very humanly needs of selfish attachment, sentiment and the will to love what was to be neglected by a code inscribed upon his being the way bone marrow was.

And Ahsoka -- her own masquerade was less a method of protection (yet neither one that she denied), but it did hide the innocence she was slowly losing grip of as the fragmented rifts seemed to scar the surface of the facade she didn't even know she had. It broke apart in crumbling ways every moment she was thrust into battle, each time Anakin tore himself apart, and bled the way dying men did for the sake of peace she'd seen, only to reveal a wartorn, desensitized, unafraid child that juxtaposed the reason they were fighting in the first place.

They were all damaged, imperfect, carrying around broken masquerades of shadows of who they were in favour of who they were not, more than they realised.

"I'm sorry, Snips." Anakin breathed, and she thinks he realises too without her ever having to verbalize this new, illuminating train of thought. "I didn't mean..." He doesn't finish his sentence, maybe he can't, but Ahsoka was good at filling in the pieces, connecting the fragments together the way they should have been, and building it better.

"I know," she said, because of course she did.

The mental shields hiding his thoughts away from her mind slid away like watery waves and ceased to exist. He put on his undershirt and let the bandages fall to the floor as he sunk with them. Ahsoka knelt down, and maybe they cried. Maybe they fit together like broken pieces with discharged masquerades in faulty, flawed ways as if they were a twisted, pathetic jigsaw puzzle that made their own destiny against fate. Maybe _family_ was who they were destined to be, and everything else was meaningless, because this forbidden attachment was the undoing to what would ruin Anakin Skywalker.

* * *

Twilight had just begun to reach into the depth of the Resolute as they approach Coruscant, and though his quarters were windowless, and outside the planet's atmosphere was only an empty expanse of blackened space, void-like and cold, Anakin could feel the pastel warmth of orange, pink and lilac hues across the sky one they entered the world's horizon. He was uncharacteristically yet perfectly content in floating within the glow of the twilight dawn that had just barely begun to reach the shrouded darkness of space. His brain seemed to be always aware, always unstable with a million and one thoughts left to think, but in this moment, he didn't think at all, and that was enough.

On his cot that consisted of more blankets than it should have, Anakin saw unfamiliar fabric lay across the end of the bed, neatly folded as if it were sacred, with a single piece of flimsi attached. 

He picked up the note of cursive, aurebesh letters and read it.

_If you die because of your own stupid, stubborn recklessness, I'm going to kill you. So please, for the sake of my sanity, and the fate of the galaxy that wouldn't dare exist without you, keep breathing._

_\- A._

It was a binder, real and genuine unlike the sad heap of bandages he'd resorted to for far too long. It was black in colour, went down to his waist and blended in within his undershirt and the rest of his robes. It looked inconspicuous, discreet, something an outsider wouldn't even recognise, but to Anakin it was the stars, the galaxy, the planets of the universe and their many constellations. It was a sense of home, of self, of family.

He put it on -

And Anakin saw himself.

**Author's Note:**

> [original notes] why anakin didn't have a binder until now is something for a later story.
> 
> i didn't intend for this to be as long as it was, and i'm not really happy with the overall flow and writing, but oh well. i needed an excuse to write my fav hurt boi anakin trope, and my brotp anisoka.


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